wakaranai

A buddy of mine recently had a minor fender bender at 20mph. He rear ended someone and now his seat belt is stuck.

It will not retract or "expand." He is able to buckle and unbuckle it, but it is stuck in one position. Apparently, the dealership wants to charge him $200 just to look at it. I have experience with seatbelts on EF's and DA Integras, but I haven't messed with Accord belts.

Any ideas before I take this thing apart!? Help greatly appreciated. Thanks.

TheAsian

No seat belts are covered under Hondas lifetime warrenty. If his dealer wont look at it take it somewhere else and report that dealer. Call them and tell them you want the number for the district area manager or even the region manager. Seat belts are inspected and replaced free. That dealer is trying to screw him out of money

KWayRacing

You should not give out this kind of misinformation. Giving someone this advise is haphazard without knowing any details. Even if you did get a DPSM District PArts and Service Manager involved he/ she would say to take it in, get it checked out and then call with the dealer's diagnosis. That means still agreeing to a check out fee, but when the truth came out about a accident and deployment then your buddy would look like a real *** after making demands and accusations without any real reason besides some guy on Honda tech told me so. If you work on cars for a living then you would know how it feels when a customer who comes to you for knowledge and expertise that you have and then upon recieving the outcome tells you that you might be wrong becuase "I read on the internet where blah blah blah". Every car repair professional instantly thinks well if you were so damned smart and savvy then why are you here in front of me seeking my assistance?. Anyway, SRS diagnosis should be like any other. Agree to an hour of check out. If the repair is deemed as warranty then the check out fee is waived and warranty picks up the tab. If it is CP or customer pay then a estimate is made leaving the customer the optin to repair for x amount or decline the recommended repairs, pay the diagnostic fee and then do whatever they want with the information.This is how all shops operate. Otherwise, everyone would bring their car in to find out what is wrong for free and then just effect the repairs themselves. In many ways it is an insult to the people who diagnose and repair vehicles professionally... implying their expert opinion and experience is worthless.
While Honda does have a lifetime seat belt warranty that does not apply to wrecked vehicles nor does it cover deployed units.
Is your friends SRS light on after the collision?
I'll bet it is. Since your friend was in an accident and had his seat belt on the SRS sytem detemined the severity of the accident was not great enough to deploy the Driver's airbag but was enough to set the seat belt pre tensioner off. The belt pretensioner ignites a charge in the seat belt tensioner that essentialy pulls the seat belt tight to draw the driver closer to the seat frame and make them more one with the car. When this tensioner has deployed the seat belt and SRS control unit will need to be replaced. Sorry but your buddy did wreck his car.
Sounds like it maybe time to call the adjuster.....uh oh.

99blackcivicSi

100% correct everything i was going to say

TheAsian

Accident or not, Honda covers seat belts under warranty. Its called a lifetime seat belt warranty. You want to argue w/ me go ahead. Im a tech that works at a Honda dealer. Victory Honda of Muncie Indiana to be specific. Cars come over from the Body shop we take out the old seat belt buckles or seat belts put them in the box and send them back UNDER warrenty.

wakaranai

Yeah, they will not replace it for free since it is in its current state due to an accident.

Bummer, so it sounds like he will have to get a new srs control unit and seat belt then. Thank you very much for the info.


Interesting. I am aware that Honda will swap out a seat belt that fails on its own with wear and tear (had one ordered for my EF a while back), but Honda of San Francisco refused to repair my friend's Accord because it was damaged in an accident.

99blackcivicSi

thats pretty interesting considering thats not correct as i'm sure your speaking with two other honda tech's. Accident is not a failure under factory if the pretensioner blew in the seatbelt (which the op's did) its not a failure it operated correctly, and its NOT A FAILURE. Just go ahead and tell us your dealer code so you can totally put your dealer out there ont he net for warranty fraud.

KWayRacing

You are right Honda offers a lifetime seat belt warranty against manufacturer defects. Not deployment. I am not arguing with you, I am correcting you. Just because you work at a dealership means nothing since the info you are giving is loose at best. A lie is a lie, no matter who tells it. Maybe thats what you think is happening becuase you are not actually doing the repair. ANd if you are then you are commtting warranty fraud and thats a big no no. Either way good luck to the ops buddy.

acdubb

I literally just left the Honda dealer in downtown Sacramento after checking this board to see what my options should be. I asked the service advisor if the seat belt repair is covered under warranty, and she said only against manufacturer defects. Apparently not because my kid thought it'd be a good idea to get it tangled and locked into position. Safety hazard? Yes. Honda's problem? No. So I'll be paying whatever hourly labor rate to get it fixed, since it's working as designed.